The U.S. and South Korea kick off large-scale military drills

South Korean and US militaries take part in Air Component Exercise (Vigilant ACE) in South Korea.

South Korea and US Air Forces continues largest scale Air Combat Drill

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said in a statement: "We hope all relevant parties can maintain calm and restraint and take steps to alleviate tensions and not provoke each other.

"The outbreak of war is not in any side's interest. The ones that will suffer the most are ordinary people."

The North Korean ally has been telling its citizens how to prepare for nuclear war, in the latest signal the world could be on the brink of conflict.

Tensions on the Korean peninsula have risen markedly in recent months after North Korea's latest missile and nuclear tests, conducted in defiance of UN Security Council resolutions and international condemnation.

On Wednesday, a US B-1B bomber flew from the Pacific US-administered territory of Guam to join the exercises, which will run until Friday.

The flights by the B-1B, one of America's largest strike aircraft, have played a leading role in Washington's attempts to increase pressure on North Korea to abandon its weapons programmes.

In September, B-1Bs were among a formation of US military aircraft that flew further north up North Korea's coast than at any time in the past 17 years, according to the US Pacific Command.

That prompted North Korea's foreign minister, Ri Yong Ho, to warn the North could shoot down the US bombers even if they did not enter North Korean airspace.

Yang Uk, a senior fellow at the KoreaDefence and Security Forum said: "B1-B bombers have been regularly dispatched to the Korean peninsula over the past years; however, it seems that the U.S. Air Force might have enhanced its training to better prepare for actual warfare.”

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The current drills involve over 230 aircraft that includes 24 stealth fighter jets

While B-1Bs are no longer equipped to carry nuclear weapons of their own, they would be key to any strike targeting major North Korean facilities, he said, adding: "That's why North Korea has been making such a big deal when B1-B bombers are flying overhead."

Both sides insist they don't want war, but blame each other for provocations while saying they will act to defend themselves.

White House national security adviser HR McMaster said over the weekend that the possibility of war with North Korea was "increasing every day".

US Republican Senator Lindsey Graham urged the Pentagon on Sunday to start moving US military dependants, such as spouses and children, out of South Korea, saying conflict with North Korea was getting close.

The Pentagon said it has "no intent" to move any dependants out of the country.

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US Air Force B-1B bomber (L) and South Korea and US fighter jets fly over the Korean Peninsula

North Korea regularly threatens to destroy South Korea and the United States and says its weapons programmes are necessary to counter U.S. aggression. The United States stations 28,500 troops in the South, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War.

The North's foreign ministry spokesman said, using North Korea's official name, said: "Recently, as the US is conducting the largest-ever joint aerial drill on the Korean peninsula targeting the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, its high-level politicians are showing alarming signs by making bellicose remarks one after another.

"These confrontational war-mongering remarks cannot be interpreted in any other way but as a warning to us to be prepared for a war on the Korean peninsula.”

North Korea's latest missile test prompted a warning from the United States that North Korea's leadership would be "utterly destroyed" if war were to break out, a statement that drew sharp criticism from Russia.

US President Donald Trump has said the whole of North Korea would be destroyed in the event of war.

The rising tensions coincide with a rare visit to the isolated North by United Nations political affairs chief Jeffrey Feltman this week, the highest-level U.N. official to visit North Korea since 2012.

Feltman met North Korean Foreign Minister Ri on Thursday, following his meeting with the vice foreign minister a day earlier, KCNA said.